ATM manufacturer Diebold Nixdorf and Australian banking services provider Cuscal are using beacon technology to deliver personalised marketing offers to people as they approach cash machines or bank branches. Cuscal is testing the technology, which involves using beacons to deliver messages via bluetooth to smartphones including specific apps. The aim is to identify how effective such marketing is during what is described as the ‘approach phase’ of the consumer experience, rather than the ‘transact phase’ once a card has been inserted in an ATM.

French department store Galeries Lafayette is using augmented reality to offer Christmas shoppers a virtual Arctic experience telling the story of climate change. The store’s ‘Amazing Arctic Christmas’ tells the story of a family of polar bears who must venture away from the North Pole due to melting ice caps, taking refuge under the store’s dome. Parisian start-up Sky Boy has partnered with them to create a mobile app, in which the bears come to life in the store.

Coconut rum maker Malibu has equipped 40,000 bottles with NFC tags. Drinkers will be able to tap their NFC device against a sunset image on the product packaging to access content and prize draws directly… More

UK and US consumers are being encouraged to sign up and use Apple Pay with a £5 or $5 iTunes gift card at Apple retail stores across both countries. “When making a purchase in store, Apple employees will ask customers if they would like to pay via Apple Pay,” MacRumors reports. “If a customer declines and does not have Apple Pay set up, employees will guide customers through the setup process to make the purchase and will offer a bonus $5 or £5 iTunes gift card for using Apple Pay as their payment method.”

Consumers can now automatically receive personalised offers on their mobile devices as they watch television or listen to the radio and save them to third party mobile wallets through a new solution launched by intelligent media provider Valassis. More

PARTNER NEWS: Mobile financial solutions firm Mahindra Comviva has released an updated version of Mobiquity Wallet, a digital wallet platform that launched in March 2014 with support for QR codes, Bluetooth, NFC and host card emulation (HCE). More

Customers of Pizza Hut will soon be able to place orders using Facebook Messenger and Twitter through a new chatbot launched by the pizza chain and technology provider Conversable. “With this service, customers will be able to reorder their favourites or saved orders from any US Pizza Hut location by chatting directly with the Pizza Hut accounts on Facebook Messenger and Twitter as well as get answers to frequently asked questions and receive the latest deals and promotions,” Pizza Hut says.

New Zealanders are being rewarded with experiences such as flights, helicopter rides and VIP event access whenever they are close to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons installed in 120 Heineken locations across the country via the beer maker’s Heineken Live mobile app. More

Customers of US drugstore giant Walgreens can now redeem paperless coupons for online and in-store purchases and “clip” offers on product pages and in search results through the Walgreens mobile app. “Clipped offers are automatically saved to a customer’s Balance Rewards card and can be seamlessly applied in-store at checkout when a customer uses their Balance Rewards card,” Walgreens says. The retailer has also integrated its loyalty program with Apple Pay and Android Pay.

Owners of a handbag from Maria&Donato’s exclusive collection will soon be able to authenticate their purchase as well as discover information about the brand and buy limited-edition handbags online with a tap of their NFC device. More

PARTNER NEWS: The Geantet-Pansiot vineyard estate in Burgundy, France is to equip all of its wine bottles with an NFC tag to let its customers authenticate the beverage and receive information about the wine directly on their smartphone. More

Cashless vending machine technology provider USA Technologies (USAT) has seen an 89% increase in revenue through contactless purchases at self-service machines running on its ePort Interactive platform as a result of digital advertising highlighting Apple Pay availability at the point of sale. More

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is working to finalise the next Bluetooth release which will add “significantly more capacity” for advertising transmissions, meaning that longer messages can be communicated through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, the organisation… More

Chinese tourists will soon be able to make payments at 210,000 store locations in Germany serviced by payment provider Concardis using Ant Financial’s Alipay mobile payment platform. The move marks the service’s launch into Europe after the company unveiled its expansion plans at Money20/20 Europe in April 2016. More

Almost 1.6bn coupons will be delivered annually to consumers via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon technology by 2020, Juniper Research forecasts. “This is up from just 11m this year, as retailers seek to develop proximity marketing campaigns in and around their stores,” the firm says. “Spend on digital retail marketing is set to increase from US$174bn in 2015, to $362.1bn by 2020.”

Customers at Pizza Hut locations in Asia will soon be able to place orders, receive offers and complete payments on a tablet held by Pepper, a humanoid robot developed by SoftBank Robotics. The transactions will be completed through MasterCard’s MasterPass digital wallet service. More